The true approach to christian antiquity is through pagan antiquity. The continuity of history is complete. There is no break. As the christian empire is the pagan empire under a new name, so christian literature is the outcome of the greek classical literature. It is not only built up with the old materials, like the forts which the Turks constructed with the sculptured blocks of the greek temples, it issues from the greek sources of thought.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Thursday, March 21, 2013
Christian and Pagan Antiquity
Mark Pattison, Isaac Casaubon: 1559-1614, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), p. 316: